Innovative Reversible

Massey Ferguson’s first hydraulically-turned reversible .plough is a fascinating implement – because of the way it looks and the way it operates. Scott Lambert takes a look at the 797 in a bid to discover why agricultural machinery enthusiasts, and not only fans of MF, find the model so intriguing

The fascination that my brother and I share for the Massey Ferguson 797 two-furrow reversible plough began when I was in my early 20s. A friend of ours bought one and used it to great effect with his Massey Ferguson 35X – resulting in, I must confess, jealousy on our part!

At that time the Lambert ‘fleet’ comprised two Ferguson TE-D 20s – one of which was a ‘keeper’ in the shape of our grandfather’s 1951 model and, if my memory serves me correctly, a 1952 example that was bought on a whim as a money-making exercise. Neither of these tractors was really up to the job of operating a two-furrow reversible .plough and so we vowed to buy our own 797 when we had a suitable tractor for it.

As the years went on, our collection grew steadily and we reached the point where we had two tractors that were ideally matched to an MF 797. Although not matching in terms of brand, the Internationals in our throng were perfectly suited to the two-furrow reversible – but luck wasn’t on our side and, try as we might, we searched for a nice example to no avail.

The Massey Ferguson 797 did, and still does, crop up from time to time, but the ploughs we found were never quite what we were looking for – which is not surprising given that we had set our sets rather high after seeing Richard Sherratt’s superb example (pictured here). It’s fair to say that although the 797 is not what you might term ‘rare’, it’s not in abundance either.

Eventually, just as we were getting over the revelation that the friend that had started our fascination with the 797 – despite professing that he would never part with it – had moved his on some years before, our luck changed when I spotted an advert on the Internet at the end of December 2015.